The use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) software applications, such as AutoCAD® by Autodesk, Inc., is well known in the art. The types of computers capable of running such software and operating as an apparatus are also well known in the art. CAD software is often used by designers, architects, engineers and the like to prepare a two-dimensional (2D) CAD drawing or three-dimensional (3D) model or models representing different physical objects, such as a mechanical device, a bridge, a building, an automobile, and airplane, etc. The more complicated the object being illustrated, the more complicated the drawings illustrating that object. For example, with respect to a building, the drawing will include the structural components of the building, including the beams, columns, walls, floors, windows, doors, etc. (the “frame”), as well as the HVAC, plumbing, electrical, fire sprinkler, and other components. The bigger and more complicated the object being illustrated, the greater the likelihood that CAD software, either 2D or 3D, will be used to do the design.
Most designs are generated as a result of collaborative and iterative processes. For example, with respect to a building design, after the frame is designed by the architects and structural engineers to create a base CAD drawing of the building structure, that base drawing is then sent to other designers or subcontractors to add their components to the design, including HVAC ducting, plumbing layouts, electrical chases, fire sprinkler lines, etc. The same process is generally followed for civil engineering or with more complicated designs of other objects, such as tool making, automobile and airplanes designs, etc.
The additional designers may use the same CAD program used to create the base drawing for their design work, or export the data from the base drawing to a third party program made for their trade, then do their design using that third party program and import the data from their third party program back into the base drawing. Alternatively, a stand-alone product with its own 3D intelligent design engine, such as AutoSPRINK® by M.E.P.CAD, Inc. (assignee of the present invention), could be used to both create the base drawings and to add subcontract designs, such as fire sprinkler systems. Such programs are typically able to run on widely available personal computers running popular operating systems like Microsoft® Windows®. Programs such as AutoSPRINK are also capable of importing or exporting different types of CAD files.
Although some CAD drawings are in 2D, an increasing number are in 3D. When the CAD drawing is in 3D, all of the subcontractors are in some cases required to work in 3D, which can be an issue for some subcontractors, who prefer to work in 2D. Presently CAD programs do not provide users with the ability to design a drawing in 2D and then automatically convert that 2D drawing into the 3D. Thus, it would be desirable to be able to convert 2D drawings to 3D and to use design labels from a 2D drawing to instruct a program on how to automatically convert a 2D drawing into a 3D drawing having similar attributes, such as beam widths and column heights.
To move the design of subcontracted components along as quickly as possible, the subcontractors often work on their modifications to a building design in parallel to one another. The parallel modified CAD drawings produced by the subcontractors are then combined to create a complete design. While faster in some ways, this parallel process creates conflict problems, such as where a plumbing line input by one subcontractor conflicts with an HVAC duct input by another. Hence, extensive design review and meetings to identify and correct conflicts are often required.
JetStream™ software, formerly produced by NavisWorks Ltd. and now owned by Autodesk, Inc., is an example of a collaborative design review product for 3D designs that works in conjunction with AutoCAD and that is intended to simplify the conflict correction process. For example, it has the ability to identify where conflicts or clashes exist and can generate reports of all of the conflicts and distances by which each conflict occurs. The subcontractor that created the conflict would then be expected to resolve it and submit a new drawing, but this is not as simple as it sounds.
In a large drawing, there may be hundreds of different conflicts created by many different subcontractors. Moving a pipe, duct or cable tray to resolve one conflict, may simply create more conflicts. Likewise, simply knowing the distance by which a conflict occurs does not provide the subcontractor with all of the information necessary to completely resolve the conflict for any given area and not create others. Furthermore, even though a subcontractor may only be responsible for a handful of conflicts, that subcontractor would typically be sent the entire drawing with all of the different subcontractor conflicts and a video and/or a conflict report, and be expected to find their conflicts and resolve them. As a result, a first conflict resolution meeting or design review will often be followed by many more conflict resolution meetings as the correction of one set of conflicts can generate many more. Thus, even though programs like JetStream can be helpful, they present less than a complete solution.
To facilitate the parallel design and design review processes, it is necessary to be able to readily view the conflicts and share different resolution proposals. More importantly, it is important to also have the ability to view in real-time the potential conflicts that may be generated by the proposed resolution of the original conflict. Given the worldwide nature of building design and construction, it is also common to have architects and engineers from many different companies, in different cities, and different countries all working on the designs at the same time. In some companies, part of the drawings might be worked on by one group of people in one city for eight hours, then sent to another group of people in another city for the next eight hours, and then to a third group of people in another city for the next eight hours, so that the drawings are worked on virtually non-stop until they are completed. U.S. Pat. No. 7,176,942 provides an example of a synchronous collaborative design system.
To facilitate this type of collaborative work, many different textual descriptions are provided in association with different elements within the drawings so that other users of the drawings know who did what and why, what needs to be done, problems that might have arisen, etc. U.S. Pat. No. 7,062,532 provides an example of a collaborative design system that enables different participants to include textual descriptions of what has been done or needs to be done and that enables discussion between participants during the design process.
As a result of the parallel/collaborative design and review processes, and the extensive use of externally referenced data, the size of the computer files associated with the drawings can become very large, making sharing increasingly difficult. And, the drawings can get very cluttered as a result of all of the different graphic objects, text references, etc. Further adding to the size and complexity of the drawings are duplicated items. During the design process, different graphic objects, such as lines, circles and arcs, might be copied and pasted in the same part or other parts of the drawings. This can result in one graphic object being copied over an identical graphic object. Each hidden object of this type is unnecessary and can collectively add significant size to the drawing files.
When one of these CAD drawing files is opened by another design participant looking to perform further design work within that drawing, all of the other information contained within the drawing, much of which is unnecessary, can make the further work much more difficult. To additionally complicate matters, many CAD software programs make it difficult to modify the drawing by erasing or turning off certain unnecessary features, and doing so can detrimentally affect other parts of the drawing. Further, some building elements that are considered to be of the same type (i.e., a column and a wall, which are both part of the walls) might be located in several different layers or blocks, complicating one's ability to work within the drawing and further expanding the size of the drawing file.
Even if it were possible to clean-up one drawing or layer within a set of drawings, all of the work undertaken to clean-up that one drawing would then have to be painstakingly repeated in all of the other drawings to clean them up in the same manner. It is therefore desirable to have a simple clean-up system and process for removing duplicative or otherwise unnecessary data from a drawing in order to facilitate subsequent work within that drawing without damaging the drawing, and to facilitate the repetition of that clean-up process in other related drawings.
Likewise, when changes are made to a drawing and a revised drawing is issued, it is desirable to be able to automatically compare the revised drawing to an original or base drawing to readily illustrate the changes that have been made. While it is known in the art to combine (or overlay) a revised document to an original or to combine a revised drawing to an original, effective tools for providing a useful automated comparison of CAD drawings are not known.
In the process of adding M.E.P trade (“mechanical, electrical, plumbing” and other trade) designs to a base building or structural drawing, or revising a drawing in some other way, it is common to create conflicts between different objects within that drawing. For example, when the HVAC ducts are added to the drawing, they may conflict (i.e., share the same physical space) with the frame, plumbing, electrical, etc. Likewise, when one object is moved to clear one conflict, another conflict may be created. Although it is known to identify conflicts, to provide information about where conflicts occur, and to provide conflict direction (a measurement of the amount of conflict between two objects), the tools provided to designers for identifying selected conflicts and resolving those conflicts leave much to be desired.
Although a cleaned up drawing is easier to use and share, there are additional things that can be done to a 2D drawing to facilitate easier, better and faster design work by subcontractors. For example, most subcontractor building components are placed close to the frame. Electrical wiring may be run up a wall and through floors. HVAC ducts are run through ceilings and past columns. In each of these cases, it is necessary to place the subcontractor elements close to the frame elements, without conflicting with other subcontractor elements or the frame elements. In a 2D drawing, this can be very difficult to do, but many designers are not comfortable designing in 3D on many CAD systems. Hence, it is desirable to enable designers to use 2D CAD programs to prepare designs and to automatically convert 2D representations of a drawing to 3D representations of the same drawing to facilitate additional design work associated with a design.